CETA a 'gold standard' agreement, Freeland tells EU committee

Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland delivered a straightforward message to the European Parliament’s trade committee in Brussels on Wednesday: progressives who support trade are “not going to get a better deal” than the Canada-EU comprehensive economic and trade agreement (CETA).

“For people who have concerns, and I know there are some in this room — and I may share these concerns myself to a degree about trade agreements, about whether trade agreements are always in the interests of people — I would to say all of you, this agreement we have done, Canada and the EU, is a gold standard trade agreement,” she told the committee.

“(CETA) is going to set a new bar for progressive trade agreements internationally.”

Freeland’s committee appearance is part of a three-day trip to Brussels where she’s promoting CETA and meeting with both proponents and opponents as the European Parliament inches closer to a vote on ratification.

Freeland expects the deal to be signed later this year and brought into force in early 2017.

Last week, she was in Germany for a similar trip, and appeared before a Bundestag committee on economic affairs.

With CETA opponents objecting most vocally to the agreement’s investment chapter — more specifically to its investor-state dispute settlement mechanism (ISDS), which allows investors to challenge government laws and regulations outside of domestic courts — Freeland got a number of questions Wednesday about the investment chapter.

Many members of the European Parliament committee focused on the changes to the ISDS system in CETA that were concluded in February.

But Freeland started off by making the general case for having an investment chapter at all.

“We’re making a deal between Canada and the EU, and we need to have some body that has the authority to adjudicate claims based upon that treaty itself. Not every single aspect will a domestic court always be able to rule on,” she said, addressing one complaint.

From there, she moved to the WTO’s state-to-state dispute settlement mechanism, which some feel is sufficient and obviates the need for ISDS.

“That’s fine when you, as a government, take a decision to elevate a domestic dispute to the state level. But it then does become a political decision,” she said, adding that not every commercial dispute benefits from state involvement.

Her emphasis, however, was on what’s been improved.

“I think there could be lingering concerns from the old ISDS. I really want to assure people the right of democratically-elected governments to regulate is fully enshrined in this agreement in ways that are really powerful as a precedent for other agreements,” she said.

“Our agreement states explicitly that loss of profit, in and of itself, does not give you recourse to the investment chapter.”

Freeland also highlighted changes to the arbitration process — the creation of a permanent list of arbitrators who aren’t practicing commercial law and are chosen at random. And the creation of an appeal process.

“There are going to be some people who are just not in favour of trade deals full-stop…But for people who are supportive of trade, but want to support progressive deals — I really want to say to you, you are not going to get a better deal. And this deal will be a very important precedent for progressive trade deals going forward,” she said.

“If Europe can’t do a deal with Canada, and Canada can’t do a deal with Europe — who can we do deals with? I mean, really.”